


Aear

by RomanticNoldo



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Immortality vs changing, POV Legolas, POV Second Person, Sailing To Valinor, mild grief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 13:48:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29296887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RomanticNoldo/pseuds/RomanticNoldo
Summary: Legolas sails for the Undying Lands.
Relationships: Gimli (Son of Glóin) & Legolas Greenleaf, Legolas Greenleaf & Fellowship of the Ring
Kudos: 4





	Aear

The wind is different here. There are no leaves to stifle its power. The landscape around you is not what you have been surrounded by since birth, for most of your life.

Yet, hearing the melodious call that has never truly left your mind, as your eyes fill with tears, you know you're coming home.

You have waited too long for this day - and you feared it. You knew you could never fully prepare yourself for the end of everything. You have been for millennia in a world that, however threatened by the shadows, although it no longer belonged to your people, was where you were born. You didn't think you could have left it easily.

Not until you realized that seeing it change would become painful for you too.

You accepted your companions. You have chosen to tolerate the thought that they might fall around you. But in those months of war, when the danger of annihilation made you truly equal, you didn't want to think about the fact that, even when you won, you would still lose them.

It was right. It had to happen. It was a price you were willing to pay when you decided to love them.

But too many have died, and whether it was from the violence of the war or the inexorable passage of time does not matter. Wherever Badhron [1] sent them, you will never be able to see them again. You couldn't stay with them on their last journey.

And now the world has really changed. It's a brighter world now that the danger that was about to kill it has vanished. But it's not yours.

There was only one place that could allow you to leave behind everything that is no longer. There is still light for you, even if for Endor [2] you are only one of the last legacies of a lost era.

However much its waves may change, the sea has remained the same from the beginning, and so has the land that awaits you beyond. Even if you've never seen it, you hear its song, as sweet as a mother's. That's the place your soul has always been meant for.

And you will reach it, finally. Every painful feeling will be erased in the melody of the waves, and you will be at peace.

But you won't go alone.

Gimli smiles at you, and although time has passed for him too, his gaze hasn't changed either. He has the same light as then. You know he will keep it until the end, and you haven't regretted enough the choices you've made so far - the bonds you've decided to form - to leave it behind.

Everything has changed, but the memories will remain - and with time only their sweetness will stay, when you are immersed in the peace that awaits you beyond the sea.

**Author's Note:**

> Note:
> 
> [1]: hoping to have found the right one, it should be Námo's Sindarin name
> 
> [2]: Middle-Earth


End file.
